The Unavoidable Struggle of Canadian Citizenship Education: An Analysis of Historical and Contemporary Challenges of Producing a Cohesive Policy Narrative

The purpose of my thesis is to examine the construction of a Canadian citizenship narrative through education. I argue that citizenship education policy in Canada has not effectively reconciled central components of Canadian citizenship with a cohesive narrative. The lack of reconciliation is due to the combination of traditional external (British imperialism) and internal (federalism and provincialism) hurdles to policy-making and the challenges of implementing ambiguous programs (civic education). Following Deborah Stone's causal story policy theory my argument is supported by constructing a citizenship education policy narrative at both the elite and classroom level that demonstrates how governments have been unable to deliver an accepted and unambiguous model of citizenship education in Canada. The elite level of education policy is constructed using state produced texts and reports of royal commissions on education from 1950 to 1994 and for the pre-1947 era, other sources and texts. The classroom level of education policy is constructed through a focus on the province of Ontario and interviews with former education ministers; bureaucrats and Grade 10 Civics teachers in Ontario to better understand the implementation of the policy. In the past, research on citizenship education has been predominately conducted through large-scale surveys that both test students and assess the programs. However, these works are less focused on policy creation and delivery and more on the impact of citizenship education. My approach is centered on the policy-making steps before impact, which are more suited to qualitative and interpretive methods.